SofaRun v2.6 released

Prophet (2496)

29-11-2016, 14:26

I've updated SofaRun to v2.6. This is mainly a maintenance release, as I decided to switch to a new C compiler. Good thing is that the code is now more compact, but I had to rewrite most of the C-assembler interface, which was a huge task.

The following tools (included in SofaRun) have also been updated:

SofaRunIt (SRI.COM)
SofaUnZip (SUZ.COM)
MigView (MIGVIEW.COM)
SofaCopy (SC.COM)

There are nice effects of having a more compact code on the tools here: SofaUnZip has more memory for its read/write buffers and SofaRun can open larger ZIP files.

Other small changes are:

Fixed a problem with Nextor when using file access to stdout to print text (this one was weird, not completely sure of the root cause yet).
Faster "on the fly save disk creation" in SofaRunIt.
Added a new "SETTINGSPATH" section in SR.INI.
Cleaned-up the code, mainly removing new warnings from the new C compiler.

Everything can be downloaded from my website.

PS: No significant changes on this version, so I did not bother to change the sofa picture...

By x-nen Aivalahostia

Paragon (1562)

29-11-2016, 17:19

Congratulations for your exellent work!!

By Louthrax

Prophet (2496)

29-11-2016, 17:40

Thanks x-nen

Small update: I missed a line while converting the assembler files, this caused the Game Master 1 emulation to not recognize the games that were loaded in RAM (not flashed).

I've fixed that, please re-download again from the same location.

By Jipe

Paragon (1625)

29-11-2016, 19:08

Louthrax : can you added a Z80 option for Turbo-R in SRI.COM
/Z switch Turbo-R in Z80 mode
i use SRI.COM with Multi-mente
i make a version for 1.3 but 1.4 have not the same place free for insert the routine

By Louthrax

Prophet (2496)

29-11-2016, 19:25

Hi Jipe,

Yes, that could be easily added. SofaRun is handling that in the settings options, that's why I did not put too much options in SRI.COM. Option could be /Z0 /Z1 /Z2 to choose between the different CPU modes (Z80, R800 ROM, R800 DRAM).

By hamlet

Scribe (4106)

29-11-2016, 21:21

You´re doing great work. Thank you!

By gdx

Enlighted (6438)

30-11-2016, 07:50

I made a automatic dual boot like this on my CF card. Now when I use my Sunrise CF interface on my Turbo R it boot on Multi-mente, on my MSX1 it boot on Sofarun. :)

Louthrax wrote:

Option could be /Z0 /Z1 /Z2 to choose between the different CPU modes (Z80, R800 ROM, R800 DRAM).

The MSX Datapack vol.3 advises to switch to R800 DRAM mode only during or just after the boot of MSX and keep this mode until next Reset or the shutdown. In contrast it is possible to switch Z80 <-> R800 ROM mode anytime.

PS: What is Sofacopy?

By Pippo

Hero (521)

30-11-2016, 14:24

Another excellent work!
Thank you very much, Louthrax!

By Louthrax

Prophet (2496)

30-11-2016, 17:51

gdx wrote:

Louthrax wrote:

Option could be /Z0 /Z1 /Z2 to choose between the different CPU modes (Z80, R800 ROM, R800 DRAM).

My guess is that's because switching to DRAM mode is a bit slow because it needs copying ROM to DRAM. Is'nt DRAM the default mode ? Anyway, I've never had a problem with that in SofaRun, it's just done once before launching the game, so that's fine.

gdx wrote:

PS: What is Sofacopy?

SofaCopy is the external tool called when you do a Copy/Paste with SofaRun (one of the "file-manager" like functions introduced in v2.5, you have that in the "Quit" menu by pressing button B).

By Louthrax

Prophet (2496)

30-11-2016, 17:53

gdx wrote:

I made a automatic dual boot like this on my CF card. Now when I use my Sunrise CF interface on my Turbo R it boot on Multi-mente, on my MSX1 it boot on Sofarun. :)

I also think this could be done with MSX-DOS 2 (at least if using Nextor) ?

By Louthrax

Prophet (2496)

01-12-2016, 19:38

Louthrax wrote:

Hi Jipe,

Done. I've updated both SofaRun and SofaRunIt distributions on my website. Documentation is also up to date. Let me know if you find problems.